


After the Party

by grommile



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Flash Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grommile/pseuds/grommile
Summary: After a party at Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne contemplates the past, and maybe a little bit of the future.





	After the Party

Old habits died hard.

While Alfred and Selina gently shooed the last few revellers out of Wayne Manor into the foredawn, Bruce Wayne sat alone in the darkness below, his face illuminated by a grid of surveillance monitors.

For once, though, he wasn't really watching them. His thoughts were focused on what had happened, not what was happening. Something had changed in Gotham over the past year, and for all that it seemed to be for the better, he couldn't bring himself to trust that.

The Joker had been a constant in his life. Each of them had made the other, in a way, and for all the Clown Prince's sins, it was sad to see the amnesiac wreck of a man who was sitting in Arkham.

They'd come into conflict so many times. The Joker's talent for being the beneficiary of jailbreaks, even when they weren't his idea, verged on the supernatural.

Somewhere down the line, he'd even managed to spread his strange brand of chaos to one of the asylum's doctors. Harley had made the fights more complicated, but with Tim and Barbara supporting him, Bruce had been able to adapt.

Then a simple length of rebar and a misplaced explosive charge had done what the asylum's doctors couldn't or wouldn't. He still needed to be kept in segregated accommodation, but it was purely for his own safety.

Bane's attentions were elsewhere. The masked revolutionary who had once broken him had gone home and taken his revolution with him, and now his hands were full with the messy business of winning the peace.

He looked up towards the manor, separated from him by however many thousands of tons of rock. Selina would probably tell him he needed a new hobby if she saw him brooding like this.

He turned off the monitors and headed for the elevator. A couple of hours sleep, and then he could start seeing about just that.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Sufficient Velocity's [Flash Fiction Fest](https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/sv-flash-fiction-fest.64149/).
> 
> The prompt, provided by SV user ItzNarcotic, was given as:
> 
> Origin: Agnostic
> 
> Genre/Mood: Any
> 
> Prompt: After a long and exhilarating celebration that lasts far into the night, one person reminisces on the past.


End file.
